Playing Zero Time Dilemma is akin to reading a book out of order as someone hands you one random page at a time-you can reread pages, absorb new ones, and rearrange them all to make more sense as time goes by. The real hook is the actual process of piecing things together. What's compelling isn't the story itself, though. In examining how memories affect our perception of time, Zero Time Dilemma also reaches into topics about humanity itself. While the blatant shocks and sometimes fetishistic gore lend some surprise to proceedings, they often feel out of place-Zero Time Dilemma may be a chaotic collection of memory fragments, but it also struggles to find the right tone. Zero Time Dilemma veers suddenly into horror to illustrate the extreme measures some characters will go to, regardless of the guilt they'll feel in the aftermath. Some characters resort to suspicion and torture, while some rely on the goodness of the other teams, despite the lack of communication between them. The game raises the question, but doesn't pretend to have the absolute answer. Are we inherently good, capable of altruism in dire circumstances? Or are we animals with predetermined instincts that merely extend our chances for survival? In examining how memories affect our perception of time, Zero Time Dilemma also reaches into more complicated topics about humanity itself. Despite the fact that it's up to us who dies, there's still a genuine tension in seeing how characters and teams distrust each other to the point of considering murder. Without memories, is it possible to build trust? "When we lose our memories, are we reborn?" a character wonders, in one of the game's more potent moments. Teams build up trust between each other, only to forget it all once they wake from a deep sleep hours later-earlier?-and start from scratch. This facet of Zero's "game" creates some of the more horrific and intriguing situations of the story. "We woke up several times, and don't remember anything at all." One of Zero Time Dilemma's non-chronological chapter select screens. "We slept for seven hours," one character mutters, glancing at the timer on his bracelet. There's no guarantee that you're playing these events chronologically, and the characters know it, too. At the beginning of each chapter, Zero Time Dilemma asks you to select one of the three teams-each with three members-and play through one of their memory "fragments." They're titled as such because at regular intervals, bracelets on the characters' wrists knock their wearers out, injecting memory loss drugs that upend the victims' sense of time. From here, though, the story branches in every which direction, doubling back on itself and correcting plot holes that weren't actually plot holes to begin with. In this case, the victims are trapped in a bomb shelter miles underground-in order to get the six codes necessary to open the exit door, Zero tells them, six people must die. As in the first two titles, Zero Time Dilemma focuses on nine individuals who have been locked up by the villain Zero, forced to compete against each other in "escape room" puzzle situations. This is the third in a series of adventure games that eschew linear storytelling techniques. There are a slew of minor problems that mire its intriguing story, but nonetheless, Zero Time Dilemma wields complex topics to paint a morbid tale about the essence of human nature. It explores quantum physics and meta probability, horror tropes and memory loss, revealing hidden nuances as it unfolds like an origami swan. Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma is a game that refuses to be pinned down.
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